"Operatic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... when they became aware that the stream beneath them differed from all streams in their experience. It was not rippling like other streams; it was not murmuring; it was tinkling out a gay little operatic tune! ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... spectacle of his end, perhaps the meanest and most pusillanimous which has ever been recorded. The poor wretch who, without a pang, had caused so many brave Romans and so many innocent Christians to be murdered could not summon up resolution to die. He devised every operatic incident of which he could think. When even his most degraded slaves urged him to have sufficient manliness to save himself from the fearful infamies which otherwise awaited him, he ordered his grave to be dug, and fragments of marble to be collected for its adornment, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... of the Welsh bards so called because the language in which they are written, which resembles a mixture of Chech, Chinese, Celtic and Chocktaw, is barred from the concert and operatic stage. ...
— This Giddy Globe • Oliver Herford
... fire,—and the distinguished tenor, who had travelled all the way from Buda Pesth in haste, so that he might 'create' the chief role in the work of his friend Valdor, began to feel that there was something more in operatic singing than the mere inflation of the chest, and the careful production of perfectly-rounded notes. Valdor himself played the various violin solos which occurred frequently throughout the piece, and never failed to evoke a storm of rapturous plaudits,—and many were ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... guests emerged from the theater. "You will run the program in full, and comment at some length on the expense attached," she went on. "You have just witnessed the private production of a full opera, unabridged, and with the regular operatic cast. Supper will follow in a half hour. Meantime, you will remain in the balcony where you ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... people who strained their eyes until darkness sent every one home. The agent having reached the limit of his credit in Ferrara, as he had at the town up the river, secretly disappeared to the shades of Milan, where it is supposed that he resumed his operatic career. ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... I find it difficult to share these emotions. I seem to smell the foot-lights of the opera in these heroic declamations, and indeed poor Napoleon the Little was himself so much of an operatic hero that to exalt him into a classic tyrant seems ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... Mademoiselle, the Empress during her stay at Aix-la- Chapelle, drank the waters with much eagerness and some hope. As the theatre there was only supplied with some German singers who were not to Josephine's taste, she had part of a French operatic company sent to her from Paris. The amiable creole had always a most royal disregard of expense. When Bonaparte joined her, he renewed his old custom of visiting his wife now and then at her toilet, and according to Mademoiselle Avrillion, he took great interest in the subject of her dressing. ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... the preparations for the dinner and ball at the Bivens palace on Riverside Drive. The solution of the whole problem flashed through his mind in an instant. They would have professional singers without a doubt, the great operatic stars and others. If Harriet could only be placed on the programme for a single song it would be settled! Her voice would sweep Bivens off his feet and charm the brilliant throng of guests. He would have to accompany her there of ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... gaming-table and the masked ball. Even the Sunday ceremonial of the Church is a pageant: the splendid robes of the officiating priest, changed in the course of the service like the costume of actors in a drama; the music, to Protestant ears operatic and exciting; the clouds of incense scattering their intoxicating perfumes; the chanting in a strange tongue, unknown to the majority of the worshipers,—all tend to give the Roman Catholic services a carnival ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... of the peon is picturesque, and to the foreign observer ever strikes a note of almost operatic strain. As the sun sets the peon dons his poncho, or serape, as the red blanket which is his invariable outer garment is termed. In the cool air of the morning or evening he speaks but little, covering his mouth with a corner of the serape, for he has a constant ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... and people began to come in; there was likely to be a rush to-night, and the players in the front room commenced their liveliest round of operatic airs. One after another turned into the side room, and the calls for service grew lively. Jane moved among them mechanically, thinking all the while of Nobby tossing in his pain; of the tree waiting for to-morrow; of her father ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... Victor had gotten up between them; and which, though not the best fit in the world, was, in color, exceedingly becoming to the dark-eyed child, who, perched upon the music-stool, was imitating her own operatic songs to the infinite delight of the old man, nodding his approval ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... attached to superficial things. However much I might try to interest them in those higher pursuits which had become necessary to me, they were incapable of appreciating them. I advocated a complete change from the bad library novels, which represented their only reading, from the Italian operatic arias, sung by Auguste, and, last but not least, from the horsy, insipid cavaliers, who paid their court to both Jenny and her sister in the most coarse and offensive manner. My zeal in this latter respect soon gave rise to great unpleasantness. I became hard and insulting, harangued them ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... "I never play operatic transcriptions and never will. The music of the opera, no matter how fine, appears to me to have its proper place on the stage—it seems out of place on the violin recital program. The artist cannot be too careful in the choice of his shorter program pieces. And he can ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... strength to do anything for long, I made up my mind on the spot. Well, that's all and quite enough, and please let us have no more explanations. We might quarrel. Don't be afraid of anyone, I take it all on myself. I am horrid and capricious, I was fascinated by that operatic boat, I am a young lady... but you know I did think that you were dreadfully in love with me. Don't despise the poor fool, and don't laugh at the tear that dropped just now. I am awfully given to crying with self-pity. ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... artistic career, and having so announced his intention to the sewing-girls in an impromptu operatic aria, he took easel and paints and went down on the towpath to paint ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... of these fellows with a flutter in his voice. No, I don't mean a vibrato. It's a flutter, like a goat's tail. It is considered real operatic. ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... way, as these good padres, are the Peruvian loungers, the "lions" of Lima—a long-haired, becloaked, truculent-looking set of fellows, whose proper place would seem to be among operatic banditti. A greater contrast and disparity than exists between them and the beautiful brunettes to whom they are fain to devote themselves, cannot well be imagined. That the latter generally prefer European gentlemen to these ill-favored beaux, follows as a matter of course. That ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... painted her as a moral monster, in which form she still treads the operatic stage, and this is the conception which mankind in general have of her. The lover of real poetry regards this romanticist's terrible drama of Lucretia Borgia as a grotesque manifestation of the art, while the historian laughs at it; the ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... St. Charles, it finally rises at Lorette above the level of the citadel. It is a lonelier road than that to Montmorenci, and the scattering cottages upon it have not the well-to-do prettiness, the operatic repair, of stone-built Beauport. But they are charming, nevertheless, and the people seem to be remoter from modern influences. Peasant-girls, in purple gowns and broad straw hats, and not the fashions of the year before last, now and then ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... each other, both embarrassed by the long silence, the military band began to play under the trees in the garden. They played one of those Italian operatic overtures which seem to have been written expressly for public open-air resorts; the swiftly-flowing notes, as they rise into the air, blend with the call of the swallows and the silvery plash of the fountain. The blaring brass brings out in bold relief the ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... known, that is, by name and face and fame—for her antecedents and circumstances were wrapped in impenetrable mystery. When I arrived in the country the Signorina Christina Nugent had been settled there about a year. She had appeared originally as a member of an operatic company, which had paid a visit to our National Theater from the United States. The company passed on its not very brilliant way, but the signorina remained behind. It was said she had taken a fancy to Whittingham, and, being independent of her profession, had ...
— A Man of Mark • Anthony Hope
... all, what nonsense it is! Miss Falconer and I are very good friends; and of course I like to talk to her—she's so sharp, almost as smart and clever as you are, when she likes to take the trouble; and of course I like to hear her sing—Why, my dear Howard, it's like listening to one of the big operatic swells; but—but to suggest that there is anything—that—there is any reason to warn me—Oh, dash it! come off it, ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... songs by him—"Music and a song, Come away, come away," Act III., Sc. 5, and "Music and a song, Black spirits," etc., Act IV., Sc. 1. This was done to please the inferior part of the audience. These songs and all this sort of operatic incantation are entirely foreign to the supernatural motive of the tragedy as Shakespeare conceived it. And I will here remark that the usual performance of "Macbeth" with "a chorus" and "all Locke's music" is ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... head and Mrs. Spicer counseled briskly, "Better stick tight to rules, my dear. This Madame knows her business, it seems, and if your operatic friend, says three, it must be as she commands. Thank goodness, she didn't tell you ...
— Miss Pat at Artemis Lodge • Pemberton Ginther
... into the past, and he recalled the evenings when he as a little child was enraptured listening to some operatic selection brilliantly played, while his mother sat accompanying upon the piano. Then he recollected the first lessons given him by his father upon that very flute, and years after the plaudits he listened to with burning cheeks after he had played one of his father's favourite pieces with such ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... wondrous meeting. But I truly take an interest In the grave young Signor Werner. Greatly has improved the singing Of my choir, since he leads it, And the taste for solemn music; While my own Italian singers Care too much for operatic Tunes of lighter character. Quietly he does his duty, Of his own accord ne'er speaking; Never begs of me a favour; Never was his hand extended To receive the gifts of bribery. Yet examples of corruption Are more frequent with us, surely, ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel
... part, go through a part, perform a part; rehearse, spout, gag, rant; "strut and fret one's hour upon a stage"; tread the boards, tread the stage; come out; star it. Adj. dramatic; theatric, theatrical; scenic, histrionic, comic, tragic, buskined[obs3], farcical, tragicomic, melodramatic, operatic; stagy. Adv. on the stage, on the boards; on film; before the floats, before an audience; behind the scenes. Phr. fere totus mundus exercet histrionem [Lat][Petronius Arbiter]; "suit the action to the word, the word to the action" [Hamlet]; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... in clamorous Italy, whose voiceful uproar strikes to the summits of her guardian Alps, and greets the coming stranger, and whose loud Addio would stun him at parting, if he had not meanwhile become habituated to the operatic pitch of her every-day tones. In Genoa, the hotels, taking counsel of the vagabond streets, stand about the cavernous arcade already mentioned, and all the noise of the shipping reaches their guests. We rose early that Sunday ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... the operatic stage would be too dangerous, if they had the wit or the humor always to amuse you as much as they do the first time you are thrown on their company. However little jargon, habits, and decency they have on the surface, it is possible ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... voice—Prof. De Blanc allowed that if Barber Sam's voice had been cultured at the proper time—by which I suppose he meant in youth—Barber Sam would undoubtedly have become "one of the brightest constellations in the operatic firmament." Moreover, Barber Sam had a winsome presence; a dapper body was he, with a clear olive skin, soulful eyes, a noble mustache, and a splendid suit of black curly hair. His powers of conversation were remarkable—that fact, coupled with his playing ...
— Second Book of Tales • Eugene Field
... brother-in-law that Prince Igor left behind when he went to the wars, and Khan Konchak, most magnanimous of barbarians. Neither character gave scope for the particular subtlety of which (as he proves in Boris Godounov) M. CHALIAPINE is the sole master among male operatic singers. But to each he brought that gift of the great manner, that ease and splendour of bearing, and those superb qualities of voice which, found together, give him a place ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 17, 1914 • Various
... on one side," he said, "I cannot read it; the notes of the Miserere are still sounding in my heart, and this operatic air would but create a discord. We will proceed to read ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... Carnival is dead, and these good people who had come abroad to make merry were funeral mutes and grave-diggers. Last winter in Rome it showed but a galvanised life, yet compared with this humble exhibition it was operatic. At Rome indeed it was too operatic. The knights on horseback there were a bevy of circus-riders, and I'm sure half the mad revellers repaired every night to the Capitol for their twelve sous ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... of Gluck, that I have been able to find, concern his married life, though many of them are in existence concerning his operatic warfare. ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... City financiers, celebrities of the drama and of the operatic stage, luminaries of the law, diplomats, and rich retired traders who had shed the "tradesman" and blossomed into "gentleman," jostled one another in the rooms and on the stairs. It is surprising how people will rush to the house of ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... and sound oratory, but of hoboes blinking in rows, and girls in gospel bonnets, and little silver and crimson placards of Bible texts. They stopped on a corner to listen to a Pentecostal brother, to an I. W. W. speaker, to a magnificent negro who boomed in an operatic baritone that the Day of Judgment was coming on April 11, 1923, at three in ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... returned home, his friends, anxious to know the impressions produced on his mind by scenes and characters so different from what he had been accustomed to at home, inquired what sort of business his son carried on? "Ou," said he (in reference to the operatic singers and the corps de ballet), "he just keeps a curn[76] o' quainies[77] and a wheen widdyfous[78], and gars them fissle[79], and loup, and mak murgeons[80], to ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... his set handsome face with sorrowful attention. He appeared to be thinking deeply, and, from his detached manner, heedless of the harmony of sound that filled the room. But her supposition was soon rudely shaken. Peters had paused in his playing. When a few moments later the plaintive melody of an operatic air stole through the room she saw her husband start violently, and the terrible pallor she had witnessed once before sweep across his face. She clenched her teeth on her lip to keep back the cry that rose, and breathlessly watched him stride across the room and drop an arresting ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... his chair, humming an operatic air and chinking the handcuffs together, by way of accompaniment. He felt intensely pleased with himself, the more so, as he saw that by this capture he would be ranked far above Gorby. "And what would Gorby say?—Gorby, ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... Journalistic Tenderfoot A Letter of Regrets All About Menials All About Oratory Along Lake Superior A Lumber Camp A Mountain Snowstorm Anatomy Anecdotes of Justice Anecdotes of the Stage A New Autograph Album A New Play An Operatic Entertainment Answering an Invitation Answers to Correspondents A Peaceable Man A Picturesque Picnic A Powerful Speech Archimedes A Resign Arnold Winkelreid Asking for a Pass A Spencerian Ass Astronomy A Thrilling Experience A Wallula Night B. Franklin, Deceased Biography of Spartacus ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... impossible to support a Royal English Opera House with its special commodity of English Opera, that is, Opera composed by an Englishman to an Englishman's libretto, and played by English operatic singers. Ivanhoe, a genuine English Opera, by a genuine English Composer (with an Irish name), produced with great eclat, has, after a fair run and lots of favour, been Doyl-ecarte, in order to make room for the Basoche, an essentially French Opera, by French Composer and Librettists, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 28, 1891 • Various
... melody of the opera into the oratorio, of which his "Creation" is a standing proof. In the latter half of the foregoing century, sacred music has gradually yielded to the opera. Mozart brought the operatic style to perfection in the wonderful compositions that ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... for an effect, that he forgave him for falling short of what he strove for. But this is a very exceptional and a very dangerous kind of precedent. Art ever is more honored in the observance than in the breach. Yet its breach often is honored by modern audiences, and especially operatic audiences, because they tend to rate temperament too high and art too low, and to tolerate singers whose voice-production is atrocious, simply because their temperament or personality interests them. Take a case in point: The Croatian prima donna, Milka Ternina, whose ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller
... counsel with his father by letter touching many details in his earlier operas, wherefore we are advised about their origin, and, what is more to the purpose, about Mozart's fine aesthetic judgment. His four operatic masterpieces are imperishable, and a few words about them are in place, particularly since Mozart has left numerous and interesting comments on "Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail." This first German opera he ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel
... interrupted by gong pounding and the shrill, high sound of discordant reed instruments. When one or more of the characters commits suicide (which as we know is an honoured custom in China) he sings—or rather whines—a long chant before he dies, just as his western operatic colleagues do, as, for instance, Edgar in "Lucia di Lammermoor" and even, to come ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... received a letter from Varvilliers containing intelligence which was not only interesting in itself, but seemed to possess a peculiar appositeness. He had heard from Coralie Mansoni, and she announced to him her marriage with a prominent operatic impresario. "You have perhaps seen the fellow," Varvilliers wrote. "He has small black eyes and large black whiskers; his stomach is very big, but, for shame or for what reason I know not, he hides it behind a bigger gold locket. Coralie detests ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... right hand of the throne. Most of them were fat, and their glittering frock-coats were buttoned so tightly that they seemed ready to burst. It required a great effort for them to rise from their knees. During all this time, the band was playing operatic airs, and as each Pasha knelt, a marshal, or master of ceremonies, with a silver wand, gave the signal to the Imperial Guard, who shouted at the top of their voices: "Prosperity to our Sovereign! May he live a thousand years!" This part of the ceremony was really grand and ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... not. Didn't you see that most of the people were strangers? How could Lady Adela be sure that she was not wounding somebody's susceptibilities by having operatic music on a Sunday evening? She knew nothing at all about half those people; they were merely names to her, that she had collected round her in order that she might count herself ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... in Paris on January 1, 1834, was a nephew of Jacques Francois Halevy, the famous operatic composer. Beginning life in the Civil Service, he himself achieved considerable distinction as a dramatic author, "Frou-Frou," written in collaboration with Meilhac, being one of the greatest theatrical successes of his century. He soon, however, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... corrupting to appear; and the effect of this administration and restraint is to be seen in Berlin even to this day. The public gardens are full of charming little resorts, where, every afternoon, for a very moderate sum, one can have either a concert of good music, or a very fair dramatic or operatic performance. Here whole families may be seen enjoying together a wholesome and refreshing entertainment,—the mother and aunts with their knitting, the baby, the children of all ages, and the father,—their faces radiant with that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... the proprietor looked as if he slept in his shop window at night without taking his clothes off. He was a gaunt man with a red nose, long but scanty black locks covered by a smoking cap, and a luxuriant black mustache. He smoked a long clay pipe, and had the air of a broken-down operatic villain. ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... enough, but strewn with big lumps of lava lying half-hidden in lava sand. I stumbled frequently, but I never fell, because one of my friends was always at my elbow and caught me; either it was the brave brigadier or Alessandro or Joe or the other Peppino or that great hulking Ninu with his operatic smile lighted up by his fitful lamp. They took care of me all the way until, after about an hour, we turned into a vineyard, called the Contrada Fra Diavolo, and our progress was stopped by a sloping embankment ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... requisites for success—not only the voice, so far unspoiled by bad training, but the sensitiveness, the beauty, even the splendid physical strength necessary to that most strenuous of all professions, operatic singing. It flattered his vanity to realize that he was the discoverer of ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... reference to Shadwell's "Opera" of The Tempest; but no copy was known to be extant until Sir Ernest Clarke proved, in The Athenaeum for August 25, 1906, that the second and later editions of the Dryden-D'Avenant version embodied Shadwell's operatic embellishments, and are copies of what was known in theatrical circles of the day as Shadwell's "Opera." Shadwell's stage-directions are more elaborate than those of Dryden and D'Avenant, and there are other minor ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... Mozart, Handel, and Mendelssohn, And fair Parepa, whose matchless tone Karl, her master, with magic bow, Blent with the angels', and held her so Tranced till the rapturous Infinite— And I've heard arias, faint and low, From many an operatic light Glimmering on my swimming sight Dimmer and dimmer, until, at last, I still sit, holding my roses fast For 'The Little Man in ...
— Songs of Friendship • James Whitcomb Riley
... first recognize the operatic air, so admirably modified and retarded it was, and its former rapid words replaced by a sad and touching theme, which called for noble endurance in one borne down by suffering. The accompaniment consisted of simple ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... country; for to-day, being Sunday, more entertainment is to be met with in Copenhagen than on any other day of the week. The theatres are all open, and the casino, sacred by the royal presence of Christian, lures, with its sweet tones of operatic music, the prudish Englishman from thoughts of Paradise and the fourth commandment. Moses, Daniel, and the Chronicles are quite forgotten; and, putting Ecclesiastes in our pocket, we are going ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... entertainment called opera is a child of the Roman Catholic Church. What might be described as operatic tendencies in the music of worship date further back than the foundation of Christianity. The Egyptians were accustomed to sing "jubilations" to their gods, and these consisted of florid cadences on prolonged ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... secretary of the Bursley Amateur Operatic Society, of which both Ethel and Millicent were members. In a few weeks' time the Society was to render Patience in the Town Hall for the benefit of local charities, and rehearsals were ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... bloom. Poison ivy, to whose baneful touch fortunately none of us appear susceptible, grows everywhere about. From the farmhouse on the narrow bottom to our rear comes the melodious tinkle-tinkle of cow bells. The operatic calliope is in full blast, at Bearsville, its shrieks and snorts coming down to us through four miles of space, all too plainly borne by the northern breeze; and now and then we hear the squeak of the New Martinsville fiddles. ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... away, he went into the chorus. My father was reared in Italy, and looked more Italian than most genuine natives. He had no voice; so he became first accompanist, then chorus master, and finally trainer for the operatic stage. He speculated in an American tour; married out there; lost all his money; and came over to England, when I was only twelve, to resume his business at Covent Garden. I stayed in America, and was apprenticed to an electrical ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... apparition, the bride halted; so suddenly indeed, that she had not time to put down both feet, but remained with one high in the air, while the other sustained itself on the light fantastic toe. The company naturally imagined this to be an operatic flourish, which called for approbation. Monsieur Love, who was thundering down behind her, cried, "Bravo!" and as the well-grown gentleman had to make a sweep to avoid disturbing her equilibrium, he came full ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... dome, its majestic breadth of steps rising from the water's edge, and the many-statued sculpture of its facade. Strangers go there to see the splendor of its high altar (where the melodramatic Madonna, as the centre of a marble group, responds to the prayer of the operatic Venezia, and drives away the haggard, theatrical Pest), and the excellent Titians and the grand Tintoretto in ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... peculiarly a music-loving community. Indeed, I was told by one Atlanta lady, herself a musician, that the city did not contain more than a thousand persons of real musical appreciation, that a number of these could not afford to attend the operatic performances, and that opera week was, consequently, in reality more an occasion of great social festivity than ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... nekasxema. Open (uncork, etc.) malsxtopi. Open (of flowers) ekflori. Open-hearted malkovranima. Openly nekasxeme, tutkora. Opera opero. Opera-glass lorneto. Opera-house operejo. Operate (surgery) operacii. Operate funkcii. Operatic opera. Operation operacio. Operative metiisto. Operative agebla. Operetta opereto. Opinion, to be of an opinii. Opium opio. Opponent kontrauxulo. Opportune gxustatempa. Opportunity okazo. Oppose kontrauxmeti, kontrauxbatali. Opposed to, to be kontrauxstari. Opposite ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... him, she had in fact sought for such an encounter. It was in the great armoury. Leonard, as soon as he perceived his wife, began humming some mad operatic tune, an opera bouffe air and bawled through the door to the dog-keeper to ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... The operatic composer is even more unfortunate than the dramatist, for he is dependent not only on the acting but on the singing of his characters; and he is also at the mercy of the orchestra. Wagner's Tannhaeuser led a stormy life at the Paris opera for a very few evenings, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... voice now commands thousands of dollars on the operatic stage, was placed under training at the joint expense of her benefactress ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... they lived last century, that Salieri was greater than Mozart because Salieri's melodies were more like Hasse's in form. Perhaps the last act might be quite as exquisite on the stage, for it is even more exquisite in the score; but that we shall not know until our operatic singers abandon their vanity and their melodrama, and by reading an occasional book, and sometimes going out into the world, learn how much they themselves would gain if they always worked with ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... pieces in the Operatic Burletta of The Village Coquettes as produced at St. James's Theatre. The drama and words of the songs by "Boz." The music by John ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... great body is emptying itself, whose blood is flowing like poor touches of a tongue on to my hand. I shut my eyes, bemused, and think of a bygone merry-making; and I remember that I once saw, at the end of a hunt, against the operatic background of a forest, a child-animal whose life gushed ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... (whose mind went early in life), with Albert Smith and Shirley Brooks, ridiculed Punch in the Man in the Moon, and in 1847 the Poet Bunn—"Hot, cross Bunn"—provoked at incessant attacks on his operatic verses, hired a man of letters to write "A Word with Punch" and a few smart personalities soon silenced the jester. "Towards 1848," says Mr. Blanchard, "Douglas Jerrold, then writing plays and editing a magazine, began to write less for Punch." In 1857 he died. Among ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... on a little. You did not talk or fuss; you yourself undertook the unaccustomed task of teaching my work to the people. Be sure that no one knows as well as I what it means to bring such a work to light in existing circumstances. Who the deuce does not conduct operatic rehearsals nowadays? You were intent not only upon giving the opera, but upon making it understood and received with applause. That meant to throw yourself into the work body and soul, to sacrifice body and soul, ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... man in knee-breeches and a cocked hat watched the proceedings cynically in the right-hand corner, whilst on the left a big fat man frantically endeavoured to recover his wig, that had been lost in the melee. The advertisement was headed, 'Morton and Cox's Operatic Company,' and concluded with the announcement that Madame Angot would be played at the Queen's Theatre. After a few moments spent in examining the picture Kate said it must have something to ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... retirement and asked leave to turn it into rime and put it on the stage as an opera. "Ay," said Milton, good humoredly, "you may tag my verses." And accordingly they appeared, duly tagged, in Dryden's operatic masque, the State of Innocence. In this startling conjunction we have the two ages in a nut-shell: the Commonwealth was an ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... a good-looking man," agreed Mr. Forbes, as he scrutinised the photographs. "But, Alicia, you mustn't fall in love with every operatic tenor you see. I believe this Coriell is a 'matinee idol,' but don't allow him ...
— Two Little Women on a Holiday • Carolyn Wells
... "side-scene" in a comic opera. But there was a serious little English lawn in front of it, over which a couple of industrious red-coats were pulling up and down a garden-roller; and in the centre of the drive before the door was a tremendous clump of rhododendrons of more than operatic brilliancy. I leaned on the garden-gate and looked out at the camp: it was twinkling and bustling in the morning light, which drizzled down upon it in patches from a somewhat agitated sky. An hour later the camp got itself together and spread ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... the file, Captain Tony advanced through the clearing, and what with his flowing black beard, his portly form, and a certain dramatic swagger which he possessed, he looked so entirely Italian and operatic that you expected to hear him at any moment burst out in a sonorous basso. With a sweeping gesture he flung down upon the table two brown canvas bags, which opened and discharged from gaping mouths ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... Miselle persuaded Melusina to take her seat at the instrument, and straightway the house was filled with such melody of sweet German love-songs, operatic morcaux, and stirring battle-hymns, that the open doorway thronged with uncouth forms, gathering as did the monsters to Arion's harp. But when at last the clear voice rang out the melody of the "Star-Spangled Banner," ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... planks and pasteboard in the choir of Notre Dame. They take their seats in the front rows, while the Goddess, an old frequenter of the suppers of the Duc de Soubise, along with "all the pretty dames of the Opera," display before them their operatic graces.[3220] They sing the "Hymn to Liberty," and, since the Convention has that morning decreed that it must sing, I suppose that it also joined in.[3221] After this there follows dancing; but, unfortunately, the authorities are wanting ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... in such an operatic and rollicking way that it was quite hard to fancy it a religious performance, which, however, it was. ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... sex. The male sometimes keeps an academy and a kit fiddle, but the domestic relations of the female remain a profound mystery; and although Professors Tom Duncombe, Count D'Orsay, Chesterfield, and several other eminent Italian-operatic natural historians, have spent immense fortunes in an ardent pursuit of knowledge in this branch of science, they have as yet afforded the world but a small modicum of information. Perhaps what they have learned is not of a nature ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 23, 1841 • Various
... again. She had understood that the house of the Foas was the real esoteric centre of musical Paris, and she had prepared herself for vast and luxurious salons, footmen, fountains of wine, rare flowers, dandies, and the divine shoulders of operatic sopranos who combined wit with the most seductive charm. The drawing-room of the Foas was not as large as her own drawing-room at the Danube. Still it was full, and double doors leading to an unseen dining-room at right angles to its length produced an illusion of ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... there, but his presence also drew representatives from every department of English life, the bench and the bar, writers of eminence of both sexes, distinguished artists, and people famous on both the dramatic and the operatic stage. The prince, with keen discrimination, had these interesting people always about him. There were also social leaders, whose entertainments were famous in London, who did their best to add to the pleasure of the visit of the prince. ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... Of an operatic performance there could be no thought. The Chancellor cancelled his engagement, and the young men who had assembled for the rehearsals went quietly home. Herr von Erfft gave Daniel a considerable purse with which ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... of Boston, has recently delivered an admirable lecture before the Mercantile Library Association of this city, on "Operatic Music," illustrated by a critical examination of Rossini's Don Giovanni. Mr. Dwight's rare musical learning and accomplishments, his exquisite taste in art, and his remarkable felicity of expression, were displayed to singular advantage ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... that, from the "fall of the opera" in 1806, the composer had purposely kept aloof from the stage. Does the Professor know nothing of Beethoven's application in 1807 to the Theater- Direktion of the imperial playhouses, to be employed as regular operatic composer?—of the opera "Romulus?"—of his correspondence with Koerner, Rellstab, and still others? It ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... his coarse white shirt—the buttons of which were unfastened at the throat—and the collar loosely turned back, showing a bronzed chest, he looked like an operatic hero, the while he sat before his instrument and sang some of those wondrous songs dear to the heart of every Finn. He could hardly have been worthy of his land had he failed to be musical, born and bred in a veritable garden of song and sentiment, ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... turned on opera, and the hostess wondered why Honora did not study for the operatic stage. Then they all urged her ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... impossible. But the professor imagines that the methods of calculation by which such results are obtained are the same as those employed by politicians in estimating their majorities on the eve of election day, by millionaires in paying their personal taxes, and by operatic sopranos in figuring out their age. The influence of a newspaper depends, of course, upon its circulation. Such influence is exercised directly in the form of news and editorial comment, and indirectly in the ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky
... they were incorrect, and certain that the music was not over good. Therefore he was silent. This piqued Lottie, for one of her purposes in the choice of what she sang was to impress him, from the barbarous West, with the idea of her superior culture. At last she said, "I fear you do not like operatic and classical music ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... a natural love for poetry and music. Indeed it is a French Canadian by birth and early education—Madame Albani—who {451} not long ago won a high distinction on the operatic stage. No writer of this nationality, however, has yet produced an opera or a drama which has won fame for its author. The priesthood, indeed, has been a persistent enemy of the theatre, which consequently has never attained a successful foothold in French ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... means of enlarging a sentence is by the extension, or repetition, of the final cadence—that effect which is so frequent in the chamber and symphonic music of Haydn, and which has its comic manifestation in the so-called "crescendo" of the Rossini Operatic Overture.[60] ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... starting-point for fresh backward, fresh forward, fresh lateral flights. The manner in which Mrs. Newsome's throat WAS encircled suddenly represented for him, in an alien order, almost as many things as the manner in which Miss Gostrey's was. Mrs. Newsome wore, at operatic hours, a black silk dress—very handsome, he knew it was "handsome"—and an ornament that his memory was able further to identify as a ruche. He had his association indeed with the ruche, but it was rather imperfectly romantic. ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... the plots are so clear, logical, and well written, that one can read them with real pleasure, which cannot be said of the ordinary operatic synopses. But the most important circumstance is that Mr. Upton's book is fully abreast of the ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... flattery that was lavished on him; indeed, he seems to have been alternately in the mood for ignoring or making fun of it. On one occasion he writes to King Joseph, "I have never sought the applause of Parisians; I am not an operatic monarch."[15] ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... gipsies, in common with waterfalls and ruined castles, belong to the ready-made operatic poetry of the world, from which the last thrill has long since departed. They are, so to say, public poetry, the public property of the emotions, and no longer touch the private heart or stir the private imagination. ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... given to mysticism and was feverishly devoted to music. Marianne Grillparzer, born Sonnleithner, belonged to a substantial middle-class family. Her father was a friend of Haydn and Mozart and was himself a composer of music; her brothers became men of note in the history of the Viennese operatic stage; and she herself shared in the artistic temperament of the family, but with ominously pathological over-development in one direction. She took her own life in 1819 and transmitted to her sons a tendency to moodiness and melancholy which led to the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... gifts of temperament and originality may, and sometimes do, mask defects of emission, particularly in the case of artists following the operatic career. But the artistic life and success of such a singer is short. Violated Nature rebels, and avenges herself for all infractions of law. A voice that is badly produced or emitted speedily becomes worn, and is easily fatigued. By an additional exertion of ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... and white neck-cloths. In front of the altar a platform three feet high covered with Brussels carpet had been erected. Pending the arrival of the wedding cortege, Mr. Morgan performed a number of operatic selections ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... a firtuoso!" grumbled a big German at John's side. John turned to him and smiled. The man, he knew, was Anton Karrosch an operatic impresario. He was glad to have his own impression of the wondrous merit of the ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... the hall struck two, and three, and four. This was Hetty's baby, and where was Hetty? Alone with her little fretful mother, moving from boarding-house to boarding-house. Pretty no longer, buoyed up by the hope of an operatic career no longer, pinched—as they ...
— The Rich Mrs. Burgoyne • Kathleen Norris
... concert went fine, with the hired lady professional singer giving us some operatic gems in various foreign languages in the first part, and Ed Bughalter singing "A King of the Desert Am I, Ha, Ha!" very bass—Ed always sounds to me like moving heavy furniture round that ain't got any casters under it—and Mrs. Dr. Percy Hailey Martingale with ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... that Roger and I should not discuss the opera business, but we didn't. That it hurt him I knew, for I knew Roger. Anglo-Saxon to the backbone, the position which his wife as a successful operatic star must put him in could be nothing but highly distasteful to him. It is one thing to snatch your wife from the stage, as Margarita's noble grandfather had done, and enjoy her in your home; it is quite another to see her snatched from your ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... each other as actors, singers, writers, or any other 'professional' persons in the world. In fact, I believe if you were to set two spiteful clergymen nagging at each other, they'd beat any two 'leading ladies' on the operatic stage, for ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... of Music; and yet, for all the purposes of devotion, I would prefer the hearty, out-breaking song of a backwoods Methodist camp-meeting. When these fancy starveling songs get up to the gate of heaven, how do you suppose they look, standing beside the great doxologies of the glorified? Let an operatic performance, floating upward, get many hours the start, and it shall be caught and passed by the shout of the Sailors' Bethel, or the hosanna ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... heroic play. When Davenant before the Restoration obtained Cromwell's permission to reintroduce dramatic entertainments, if not plays, music necessarily formed the chief part of the performance. It was in fact an opera, and operatic peculiarities remained after all restriction had been taken off. Scott assigns on the whole far too much influence to the French drama and to the personal predilection of Charles. The subject is a large one, and has never been fully handled, but readers may be referred to the present editor's ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... American spring carts are much too European to warrant unslinging the Kodak. But the cachape—here is something not to be lightly passed over. Lying idle it may not strike him at first sight as a cart, but rather as a remnant of some revolution, when, tired of waging light operatic war, the army disbanded, leaving their gun-carriages to ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... man. But he felt no apprehensions; his sunny smile and his charming manner had often swept away greater obstacles than this old fellow's crustiness. So he strode along in high spirits, flicking the tops off the wayside weeds, whistling a gay operatic air and incidentally wondering whether her eyes were blue ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith
... winds as a sawmill, which will kill her within a year. With her are the singer, Brignoli, and that man of orchestras, Theodore Thomas. The sepulchral Herman Melville enters, and saunters funereally across to Taylor, Stoddard, and Boker. Rachel and Brignoli are talking of the operatic failure at the Academy of Music under Manager Payne. They speak, too, of Mrs. Wood's success at Wallack's, and of Burton's reopening of the old Laura Keene Theatre, in Broadway across from Bond. Thomas mentions the accident at Niblo's the other evening, when Pauline ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... added, as Roy turned to go. "We may be needed. Those operatic performers in the City aren't going to sit twiddling their thumbs by the look of them. When's ... ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... know how I come to be here. You are to learn then that Mr. Koenig happened to be one of my patients in the hospital, he having gone there for a slight operation, and I having helped to nurse him through what he calls his 'operatic cure.' In the course of that ordeal he had music of a less excruciating kind sometimes, it seems, and after his return home he searched for me all over London on account of my voice, and finding me unexpectedly at last he sent his wife to Mrs. Jupe's to ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... our most successful operatic managers—impressario, I believe, is the more correct appellation—was about to produce the opera of "Salome," which had been taken off the rival stage after its first performance, on the assumption that New York was shocked. The singer was not only to sing the part, if one can sing ...
— Commercialism and Journalism • Hamilton Holt
... Pretis," said the count, with a certain quaint geniality, "I have my precautions observed. I examined Signor Cardegna in Italian literature in my own person, and him proficient found. Had I found him to be ignorant, and had I his talents as an operatic singer later discovered, I would you out of that window have projected." De Pretis was alarmed, for the old count looked as though he would have carried out the threat. "As it is," he concluded, "you are an honourable man, and I wish you good-morning. Lady Hedwig awaits you as usual." ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... opera does not equal in value Lortzing's "Czar and Zimmermann", it has nevertheless proved an admirable addition to the operatic repertory. It is attractive both on account of the freshness of its melodies and the popular character ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... opera occasionally; more or less under protest, because of its length, and because his mind was too practical for the indirect operatic form. He could not remain patient at a recital; the effort to listen to one performer for an hour and a half was too severe a tax upon his restless nature. The Philadelphia Orchestra gave a symphony concert each Saturday evening, and Bok dreaded the coming of that evening in each ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... the first representation of this romantic opera, which we shall never cease to regard as one of the proudest achievements of genius, was almost unprecedented. It was received with general acclamations, and raised his name at once to the first eminence in operatic composition. In January it was played in Dresden, in February at Vienna, and everywhere with the same success.—Weber alone seemed calm and undisturbed amid the general enthusiasm. He pursued his studies quietly, and was already deeply engaged in the composition of a comic opera, "The Three ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 477, Saturday, February 19, 1831 • Various
... An excellent operatic company was giving a series of performances in the city, and all Cincinnati was at Pike's Opera House listening to I Puritani on the evening of the 7th of July. General Burnside and his wife had one of the proscenium boxes, and my wife and I were their guests. ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... record. In 1792 Cimarosa left St Petersburg, and went to Vienna at the invitation of the emperor Leopold II. Here he produced his masterpiece, Il Matrimonio segreto, which ranks amongst the highest achievements of light operatic music. In 1793 Cimarosa returned to Naples, where Il Matrimonio segreto and other works were received with great applause. Amongst the works belonging to his last stay in Naples may be mentioned the charming opera Le Astuzie feminili. This period of his life is said to have been embittered ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... perfect. Mr. R. HENDON as Sir Rupert de Malvoisie (the Crusader) suggested, by his accent and gestures, that he must have come from the East—how far East, it boots not to inquire. Miss FLORENCE DARLEY was a good Lady Alice, and Mr. J. A. SHALE an efficient "Craven." Later on an operatic performance is threatened. If the thrilling series of arrangements on the back of the Programme is to be accepted as authentic, the members of the Club will be invited to have Patience. It would be difficult to find a ...
— Punch, or, the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 8, 1890. • Various
... screamed out Miss Guinea-fowl, "to see the care our mistress takes of that homely bird. It don't seem to be able to sing a note. I can make more music than that myself. Indeed, my voice is quite operatic. Pot-rack! pot-rack! pot-rack!" and the empty-headed Miss Guinea-fowl nearly cracked her own throat, and the ears of everybody else, with her screams. And the great vain peacock spread his sparkling tail-feathers in the sun, and looked with annihilating scorn on the dull ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston
... understand," Dabnitz added. "There is an operatic tenor in the command—one Chautonville. We might have sent for him, but our thought was to reach the soldiers directly. ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort
... experiment, but the leading features are pictured verbally with remarkable clearness, and the music invests them with a sense and distinctness of convincing force as an inseparable whole, such as had not been previously known in opera. It may be said that with the "Flying Dutchman" a new operatic era began, or rather the attainment of its dimly conceived destiny as a musical drama. It also expresses the mental activity of the time and the longing for a new world, which was to redeem mankind and secure for us an existence worthy of ourselves. It still appears ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl
... who struck her as the mere battered wreck of a vessel that might have once floated gaily enough on its outward voyage to the sound of pipes and tabors. She spoke gently as she pointed out to him the operatic selections she wished him to copy, and he seemed to sun himself in her auburn, radiant presence, so that when he made his exit with the music-books under his arm, his bow, though not less ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... been an attractive, cheerful property, and there had been much feasting and revelry there not long before. It had been laid out for the famous singer who had sold it to Jenkins, and it exhibited traces of the imaginative genius peculiar to the operatic stage, in the bridge across the pond, where there was a sunken wherry filled with water-soaked leaves, and in its summer-house, all of rockwork, covered with climbing ivy. It had seen some droll sights, had that summer-house, in the singer's time, and ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... no power of endurance in the muscles can be gained. They must be so strong that a great operatic role can be repeated ten times in succession, in order that the singer may become able to endure the strain of singing in opera houses, in great auditoriums, and make himself heard above a great ...
— How to Sing - [Meine Gesangskunst] • Lilli Lehmann
... did it like an operatic tenor—a regular handsome fellow, with flashing eyes and lovely moustache, shouting a war-cry and charging like Don Quixote at the windmills. We nearly burst with laughter at him; but when the sergeant ran up as white ...
— Arms and the Man • George Bernard Shaw
... crushed me. I know better now. I know that clerks in box-offices, with their correct neckties and their air of continually doing wonders over the telephone, are not, after all, the grand masters of the operatic world. I know that that manner of theirs is merely a part of their attire, like their cravats; that they are not really responsible for the popularity of great sopranos; and that they probably go home at nights to Fulham by the white omnibus, or to Hammersmith by ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... Highnesses the Prince and Princess of WALES, having come to enjoy the Opera, remain undisturbed, and leave in perfect tranquillity. Excellent example to perturbed audience. Excitement within the house. DRURIOLANUS, Earl DE GREY, Mr. HIGGINS, and other members of the Organising Operatic Committee, ready to charge the mob at a moment's notice, to charge up to two guineas a stall, if necessary. Not necessary, however. Calls for the Sheriff-elect. DRURIOLANUS, not having the official costume ready, cannot appear in it, but uses his authority ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 19, 1890 • Various
... lived, and here a great part of the associators would gather in the evenings. Of a summer night, when the moon was full, they lit no lamps, but sat grouped in the light and shadow, while sundry of the younger men sang old ballads, or joined Tom Moore's songs to operatic airs. On other nights, there would be an original essay or poem read aloud, or else a play of Shakespere, with the parts distributed to different members; and, these amusements failing, some interesting discussion was likely to take their place. Occasionally, ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... had never chanced to meet. She had appeared very little in society, excusing herself on the plea that her professional engagements demanded all her energies. And certainly, since the immediate and overwhelming success which she had achieved at Covent Garden, her operatic work had made immense demands both upon her ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... lecherous Antonio; in the same year Banks caricatured him as a quite unhistorical Cardinal Wolsey, Virtue Betray'd; or, Anna Bullen; in Crowne's mordant City Politics (1683) the Podesta of a most un-Italian Naples; the following year Arius the heresiarch in Lee's Constantine the Great; in the operatic Albion and Albanius (1685), Dryden does not spare even physical infirmities and disease with the crudest yet cruellest exhibition, and five years later he attacked his old enemy once more as Benducar in that great tragedy ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... some mistake," faltered Joan, unconsciously answering in English. "People who do not know Monsieur Poluski often take him for an operatic artiste. He is a painter. He sings only to amuse himself, and seldom waits to consider whether the time ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... great canal of San Marco the scene was like a water-carnival. Hundreds of gondolas, with bobbing lights, swam slowly round the barges of the serenaders, who, for the most part, were fallen operatic stars or those who had failed to attain those dizzy heights. Many of them had good voices, but few of them last long in the damp Venetian night air. To-night there were three of these belanterned barges, taking ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... Graham heard little of Selby except as a literary recluse, whose only distraction from books was the operatic stage. But he heard much of Isaura; of the kindness which Madame de Grantmesnil had shown to her, when left by Selby's death alone in the world; of the interest which the friendship and the warm eulogies of one so eminent ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... an operatic singer, born in Sweden, daughter of a peasant, and one of the foremost sopranos of her day; distinguished for her dramatic talent no less than by her powers as ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... for great things from this new departure. It is rare enough for an operatic performer to be capable of both singing and acting, or to be alike beautiful to look on and to listen to. Once we have accepted the convention by which an actor's lips are allowed to move in one part of the stage while the sound comes from a totally ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 24, 1914 • Various
... always shown an unusual talent for music and enjoyed excellent instruction in it, decided to become a musician. Continuing his secluded life at Eisfeld he devoted himself for years to the leisurely study and composition of music, until a few successful amateur performances of some operatic compositions of his attracted attention to him in musical circles in Meiningen, the near-by ducal residence. He was granted a scholarship amply sufficient to permit him to perfect his musical education at Leipzig under Mendelssohn, then the renowned director ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... An amateur operatic company had been started in the town, and all the musical talent among the younger generation had been stirred up to take part in what was regarded as a pleasant occupation for winter evenings with the pleasurable anticipation of the excitement of a public performance ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... one, with the petals in disparting pointing to junction, and compared it to the famous tiptoe ballet-posture, arms above head and fingers like swallows meeting in air, of an operatic danseuse ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... tactful and diplomatic hostess as well. She not only cultivated the right kind of people who were congenial to each other, but she always managed to have some guest of special distinction whom every one was eager to meet. Her own wide acquaintance among the prominent operatic artists and her husband's influential position in the world of finance made this policy an easy way of furthering her social ambitions. She would always invite some one whom she could present as the lion of the evening. One week it would be a tenor from the opera house, another time ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... prima donna." And while he sat with closed eyes during the third act, wondering whether he should believe the critics in the flesh, or their criticisms in the columns of their respective journals, he saw rehearsed before him a new operatic perversion of MACBETH, as unlike the original as even VERDI'S MACBETTO, and quite as inexplicable to the unsophisticated mind. And this is ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 11, June 11, 1870 • Various
... music, for Holmes's face became set, and the resemblance to his honorable father, which had of late been so marked, seemed to dissolve itself into an unpleasant suggestion of his other forbear, the acquisitive Raffles. My own enthusiasm for our operatic experience, which I took no pains to conceal, found no response in him, and from the fall of the curtain on the first act it seemed to me as if he were trying to avoid me. So marked indeed did this desire to hold himself aloof become that I resolved to humor him in it, and instead of clinging ...
— R. Holmes & Co. • John Kendrick Bangs
... to himself, "'What did you say to her?' 'Nothin'. I started to, but'—" Then he put on a burst of speed and passed them, sweeping off his hat with operatic deference, yet hurrying by as if fearful of being thought a killjoy if he lingered. He went to the "frat house," found no one downstairs, and established himself in a red leather chair to smoke and ruminate merrily by a great fire ...
— Ramsey Milholland • Booth Tarkington
... aperiret, ut sordes postmodum quascumque contrahimus eleemosynis abluamus." c. 2: "sicut lavacro aquae salutaris gehennae ignis extinguitur, ita eleemosynis adque operationibus iustus delictorum flamma sopitur, et quia semel in baptismo remissa peccatorum datur, adsidua et iugis operatic baptismi instar imitata dei rursus indulgentiam largiatur." 5, 6, 9. In c. 18 Cyprian already established an arithmetical relation between the number of alms-offerings and the blotting out of sins, and ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... household, and the possibilities of his income. It was weary, hard, nerve-racking employment. About the muddle of June they closed Viviani. Susy Clemens went to Paris to cultivate her voice, a rare soprano, with a view to preparing for the operatic stage. Clemens took Mrs. Clemens, with little Jean, to Germany for the baths. Clara, who had graduated from Mrs. Willard's school in Berlin, joined them in Munich, and somewhat later Susy also joined them, for Madame Marchesi, the great master of voice-culture, ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... of Bach on the clavichord. Her infantile graces at these instruments were the delight and amazement of her parents. She warbled this old-time music as other children do the vulgar songs of the hour; she seemed less anxious to learn the operatic music which she heard in her mother's class-rooms, and there was a shade of uneasiness in Mrs. Innes's admiration of the beauty of Evelyn's taste; but Mr. Innes said that it was better that her first love should be for the best, and he could not help hoping that it would not be ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... he continued, as he drew 13, "all ye've got ter do is this—313." I gasped in amazement, not at his cleverness as a brand-destroyer, but at his honest abandon. With a horrible operatic laugh, such as is painted in "The Cossack's Answer," he again laboriously drew () (the circle cross), and then added some marks which made it look like this: S()S. And again breaking into his devil's "ha, ha!" said, ...
— Crooked Trails • Frederic Remington
... dull, well-to-do, contented; not in the least the kind of setting demanded by the patriotism which has to be fed on pictures of little girls singing the Marseillaise in Alsatian head-dresses and old men with operatic waistcoats tottering forward to kiss the flag. What we saw at Dannemarie was less conspicuous to the eye but much more nourishing to the imagination. The military and civil administrators had the kindness and patience to explain their work and show us something of ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... "Hum! Born in New Jersey in the year 1858. Contralto—hum! La Scala, hum! Prima donna Imperial Opera of Warsaw—yes! Retired from operatic stage—ha! Living in London—quite so! Your Majesty, as I understand, became entangled with this young person, wrote her some compromising letters, and is now desirous of ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... crashed down upon us a thunderous outburst of song: as though an exceptionally large-lunged seraph were afloat immediately above us in the open regions of the air. Yet the song was of a gayer sort than seraphs, presumably, are wont to sing; and its method, distinctly, was that of the modern operatic stage. In point of fact, the singer was not a seraph, but an eminent professor in a great institution of learning and a literary authority of the first rank—whose critical summary of French literature is a standard, and whose studies of Beaumarchais and Le Sage ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... Burney, in the course of his tour in Germany (1772), much impressed by JOHANN FRIEDRICH AGRICOLA (1720-1774), court composer and director of the royal chapel to Frederick the Great. This Agricola was a pupil of Bach, and a fine organist and clever writer on music, especially on operatic style, the problems of which were beginning to be raised by French writers-and composers in preparation for the work ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... conviction. We have passionate love-songs sung by guileless individuals who would be inexpressibly shocked if you explained to them the meaning of the sentiment to which they had been giving utterance. There are operatic scenas, dealing with abduction and all sorts of uncomfortable situations, and again youngsters declaim of their somewhat indecorous emotions with gusto and—let us hope—a sublime insensibility of all that they imply. They are warbling words to music, but they are not singing, for ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... following the manager was a tall man with rather a severe look in his eyes. It happened to be Lord Kitchener, followed by his personal private secretary. For a moment there came a dead silence, immediately relieved by the strains of the band beginning an operatic overture and the dinner proceeded. At the end of dinner all officers in uniform were notified to interview a staff officer previous to leaving the hotel. Within two days the number of officers frequenting the Mount Nelson ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... in daubing with hot mush from a huge wooden spoon the sheets I had composed with much painstaking. The grand event in the "Pudding" of our time was the performance of Fielding's extravaganza of Tom Thumb. I think it was the club's first attempt at an operatic performance, and it was prepared with great care. I suppose I am to-day the only survivor among those who took part, and it is a sombre pleasure to recall the old-time frolic. The great promoter of the undertaking was Theodore Lyman, able and forceful afterward as soldier, scientist, and congressman, ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... All sentiment was extracted, as quite out of place, and sublimity was made to give way to a more temperate and stoical standard. In due time the Rationalists effected their purpose. Secular music was introduced into the sanctuary; an operatic overture generally welcomed the people into church, and a march or a waltz dismissed them. Sacred music was no longer cultivated as an element of devotion. The oratorios and cantata of the theatre and beer-garden were the Sabbath accompaniments ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... phase of the traffic in white slaves. Her coolness never deserted her, for she was as temperamental as a fish, and, for all the sunny white and gold of her surface, she had the shallow restlessness of a meadow brook. At twelve years of age she had devoted herself to music and had planned an operatic career; at fourteen, she had turned to literature, and was writing a novel; and a year later, encouraged by her practical mother, she had plunged into the movement for woman suffrage, and had marched, in a white dress and carrying a purple banner, through an admiring ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... caught himself up quickly in the middle of a sentence, strode over to the piano, and began to play as he generally does, you know, when he comes here. Well, would you believe it, my dear! instead of improvising or playing operatic airs as usual, he began to play a stupid little tune which every child was taught years ago, of course with variations of his own. Then he turned round on the music- stool with the oddest smile I ever saw, and said, "Do you know that air, ...
— The Autobiography of a Slander • Edna Lyall
... I've only known you two months, since the day we accidentally met, leaving Paris for Bayreuth. You have written your mother nothing of our engagement—well, provisional engagement, if you will—and you insist on sticking to the operatic stage. I loathe it, and I confess to you that I am sick with jealousy when I see you near that lanky, ill-favored German tenor Burgmann." "What, poor, big me!" she interjected, in teasing accents. "Yes, you, Fridolina. I can quite sympathize with what you tell me of your mother's dislike for the ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... can talk about your music, and your operatic airs, And your phonographic record that Caruso's tenor bears; But there isn't any music that such wondrous joy can bring Like the concert when the kiddies and their ...
— A Heap o' Livin' • Edgar A. Guest
... Two operatic stars did me the honor to copy my Margaret dress—Madame Albani and Madame Melba. It was rather odd, by the way, that many mothers who took their daughters to see the opera of "Faust" would not bring them to see the Lyceum play. One of these mothers was Princess Mary of ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry |
